At the hotel, he followed her into her room and checked the bathroom and closet. “Do you really think someone is hiding out here, waiting to pounce?” she asked when he returned from the bathroom.
“Probably not. But better to be safe.” He picked a room service menu from the dresser. “What do you want to eat?”
“Some soup. I don’t care what kind.”
He called in the order, then settled into the room’s one chair, while she sat on the side of the bed. “All right if I eat in here with you?” he asked.
She shrugged. She didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t want him hovering, either. “I should call Patrick,” she said.
“And tell him what?”
“Whatever I want,” she snapped. She picked up the receiver from the phone by the bed. “If I don’t call, he’ll think something’s wrong.” But of course, a lot of things were wrong. Someone—probably her father—was trying to kill her. A man she thought was dead had come back to life. She’d seen her brother for the first time in a year, and part of her had been afraid to let him see her. Nothing in her life was as it ought to be.
She dialed his number. One of her first assignments as an enrollee in Witness Security had been to memorize the number.
He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s Anne. I wanted to let you know I’m all right.”
“Where are you? What have you been doing? Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” The rapid-fire questions betrayed his agitation, though his voice remained calm.
“I don’t have my phone anymore. I, uh, I lost it.” She doubted he would believe the lie, but she felt compelled to try it. She didn’t want to alarm him, to make him want to rush her back into WitSec. She wasn’t ready yet to change her name and her job and her life all over again. Not when she had a chance to stop her father—and to make things right with Jake.
“Where are you now?”
She hesitated. Lying to this man who’d been her only real friend this past year was impossible. “I’m in Telluride. At a hotel.”
“Are you alone?”
She glanced toward Jake and found him watching her, eyes burning. “Jake is with me,” she said.
“Are you all right? Has he tried to hurt you?”
“No! I mean, I’m fine. Jake has asked me to help him find my father.” Jake was shaking his head, but she turned away from him.
“He has no business contacting you.” Patrick sounded angry. “And he has no business with your father. He’s not a federal agent and he could be charged with interfering with an ongoing investigation. He’s putting you in danger.”
She had put herself in danger by agreeing to come with him. “Patrick, listen,” she said. “I think my father might be here—in Telluride.”
“What makes you think that? Have you see him?”
“No. But today I thought I saw my brother, Sammy. And the man who attacked me at my house in Rogers had a Telluride lift ticket on his jacket.”
“Then you shouldn’t be there. I want you to leave town immediately. Go back to the cabin where you were staying. You said that was safe, right?”
“Someone set fire to the cabin last night,” she said. “Or rather, very early this morning, while we were asleep. We got away, but then they tried to run us off the road. Jake found a tracking device on my car. He thinks the man who came to my house in Rogers planted it.”
Jake stood and made a move as if to grab the phone, but she leaned out of his way. “I really think we’re close,” she told Patrick. “As soon as we’ve located my father, I’ll call and tell you. You can send federal agents in to make the arrest.”
“I should come now, and get you away from there,” Patrick said. “We can take it from here.”
“If you send a bunch of feds into town, my father is going to find out,” she said. “Let Jake and me see what we can find out first. We’ll be careful.”
“This isn’t your fight anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Patrick, but it is. He’s my father and he’s trying to kill me. I have to see for myself that he can’t harm me anymore. That’s the only way I can get on with my life.”
“Letting you stay goes against everything I’ve pledged to do.”
“If you come to town now and interfere with this, I’ll leave and you’ll never hear from me again.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Then don’t force my hand.”
Silence. She could almost hear him thinking. Jake stood beside her, hands on his hips, glaring down at her. “I’ll compromise,” Patrick said. “I’ll station a team near there, and when you give the word we’ll move in. If you need anything in the meantime, call me. And don’t do anything foolish. And don’t let Jake do anything foolish.”
“I won’t.”
“Be careful around him, Anne. He’s not the man you knew before. Word is he’s been obsessed with this case. Obsessive people don’t act rationally.”
What was rational about any of this? But she didn’t bother pointing that out to Patrick. “I’ll be careful,” she said. “And I’ll stay in touch.”
“I’ll only give you a few days. Then I will find you.”
“A few days is all I’m asking. My father is either here or he isn’t. We should know soon.”
She hung up the phone. “What did he say?” Jake asked.
“He’s going to station a team nearby, but he won’t make any move until I tell him.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I do. They want to find my father as badly as you do.”
“Did you mean that—about leaving if they interfered?”
“Yes.” She met his gaze, resolve strengthening in her. “I’ve run away from my father long enough. I need to end this once and for all.”
Chapter Eleven
The next morning Anne and Jake dressed in the ski clothes they’d also purchased at the thrift shop, and rode the gondola up the mountain to the ski resort, where they rented equipment and purchased lift tickets. “What now?” Anne asked, when she’d followed Jake up the stairs to the base of the first ski lift.
“Now we wait. We hang out here, watch people coming off the gondola and boarding the lift, see if you spot anyone familiar.”
She looked around at the skiers and snowboarders who stood in groups on the cobblestones of the ski village or queued up to board the lift. Dressed in helmets or knitted caps and brightly colored jackets and pants, they looked like circus performers, or aliens. “How am I going to recognize anyone when they’re dressed like this?” she asked.
“You’ll recognize your father or your brother.”
“Will I?” Maybe she’d been wrong about seeing Sammy yesterday. After all, she’d only glimpsed him for a second. Maybe her imagination had played tricks on her.
“You will.” Jake patted her shoulder. “Your subconscious will, even if your conscious self doubts.”
“Is that the kind of thing they teach you at the Bureau?”
“No. I read it in a book somewhere.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
She started to move toward the lift, but he stopped her. “We can see more hanging out down here than we can actually skiing.”
“I think we can see a lot from the lift.”
“No. This is where the action is.”
Reluctantly, she slotted her skis alongside his in a rack and found a chair outside the bar and restaurant at the base of the lift that transported skiers up the mountain. “If this is all we were going to do, we could have worn our street clothes,” she grumbled. “We could have told anyone who asked that we were waiting for our children to get out of ski school.”
“Really? How many children? Boy or girl? Or maybe one of each.”
She glared at him.
“If things had worked out differently we might have a child by now,” he mused. “Though he—or she—would be too young to learn to ski.”
Pain squeezed her heart as she thought of the baby she and Jake might have had. First, there would have been a huge society wedding, maybe at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Her father would have spared no expense for his only daughter. She’d have had a designer gown and a diamond tiara and a reception that people would have talked about for months afterward.
She and her new husband would have settled into a condo her father owned, and her husband would work in the family business, while she stayed home and raised children. On Sundays, they’d dine with her parents and her brother and his family, and there’d be no such thing as a holiday alone.
It was an old-fashioned lifestyle, one in which the women didn’t work or have any independence of their own, so the reality would have been much less comfortable than the fantasy, but it had been her dream, until Jake had showed her the cruelty and ugliness beneath that pretty picture of family devotion. Once he’d opened her eyes, the dream hadn’t seemed so lovely.
“Pay attention.” Jake tapped the back of her hand. “Do you see anyone in the lift line or skiing down the mountain that you recognize?”
She scanned the crowd. “No.”
“I think I’d recognize your father,” Jake said. “I didn’t see Sammy enough to be sure of recognizing him. But I’m guessing anyone who’s skiing with a couple of burly bodyguards will stand out.”
“You might be surprised,” she said. “A lot of celebrities ski here. Some of them probably have bodyguards.”
“I don’t think even I would confuse your dad and some pop star.”
Would a year on the run have aged her father? Or would time spent apart make her see him differently? “I don’t think sitting here waiting is going to do us much good,” she said. “From the lift we can see more.”
“Fine. You go ski. I’m staying here.”
She stood. “You can’t ski, can you? You lied to me.”
“I can ski. Or I could, before last year.”
The image of him lying in a pool of blood on the floor of that hotel ballroom flashed into her mind and she felt sick. “I’m sorry. Your legs were injured. I didn’t think—”
He waved away her apology. “I could probably still do it if I had to, but I’ll be more mobile here. You go on and if you see anything, call me.”
“All right.” She should be safe enough by herself with people all around, and she had her phone to summon help. She put on her skis and moved into the line for the lift. This wasn’t her first visit to Telluride; she’d come last year with a group of teachers and spent the day exploring the slopes. It had been one of her best days since coming to Rogers—one of the days when she hadn’t felt so alone.
She rode up the lift with a mother, father and daughter from Texas. The ski runs spread out below the lift like a white carpet, skiers and snowboarders zipping along like toys on a track.
Her father would have moved away from the main ski area as quickly as possible. He didn’t like crowds or waiting in line. The lifts farther from the base area would be less crowded, the terrain more challenging. She thought back to her previous visit to the resort, and other ski vacations she’d taken with her family. What runs would most appeal to her father?
At the top of the lift, she skied to a map of the area and studied it. Her father liked to show off. He liked to prove to himself, and to the men around him that, though he was getting older, he was still a man to be feared. He didn’t, as he’d said on one of those long-ago vacations, want to ski with a bunch of women and children.
Anne decided he’d head for a group of double black diamond runs that hurtled down narrow, tree-lined slopes into territory that had been backcountry skiing until only a few years before. She’d make her way over to Revolution Bowl. There would be fewer skiers there; if her father was among them, she’d be sure to spot him.
As she skied to the next lift, she began to relax a little. The snow was smooth and perfect, the sun bright and the temperature not too cold. She was a strong skier, and she was safe here. No one was likely to recognize her in her secondhand ski clothes, her hair stuffed under a rented helmet. She was an anonymous tourist, free to move around as she chose.
She rode a second lift farther up the mountain and made her way to yet another lift that took her to the top of Revolution Bowl. From the top, she had a view of the entire resort and the town below. Half a dozen other skiers joined her at the start of the group of runs, none of them her father. Only one other woman was there—she smiled and nodded to Anne, who returned the nod.
Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe now that her father was older, he no longer attempted such challenging terrain.
She pointed her skis down the slope and started down the run, her heart in her throat. It was steeper than she’d anticipated. The group she’d been with last year hadn’t ventured into this terrain, labeled
expert only
on the map. Trees formed a dark green wall on either side of the narrow chute, forcing her to make tight turns. So much for her brilliant ideas. It was going to take all she had in her to get down from here onto more manageable terrain.
She stopped to rest at the side of the run and looked back up at the section she’d just skied. Probably a mistake, since it was steeper than anything she remembered skiing before. But she told herself if she’d come this far, she’d be fine....
Something about the stance of the skier coming down the mountain toward her made her breath catch. She shrank farther into the shelter of the trees and stared as the man moved nearer, trailed by a burlier man. The first skier wore black pants and a dark blue jacket, while his companion was dressed all in black. He descended the run in a series of sharp, aggressive turns, attacking the snow as if determined to subdue it.
Her first thought was that she was watching her father, but as the man skied closer, she thought it must be Sammy. He was broader across the shoulders than her father, younger and more athletic. She prayed he wouldn’t notice her, hiding here in the trees.
In horror, she watched as he skied to a stop directly in front of her. “Hello,” he said. “We don’t see many women over on this side of the mountain.”
She angled herself away, and pulled her fleece neck gaiter over her nose and mouth.
“Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas anglais,”
she said, in a high, breathy voice that was partly an act and partly due to the fact that she was having trouble breathing.
“I might have known, a European,” he said to his bodyguard, who’d stopped slightly behind him. He turned back to Anne, and in perfect French, said. “I usually ski in Europe myself, but decided to try here this year. Are you enjoying the runs?”
Idiot
. She’d forgotten Sammy had studied with the same French tutor she had. Her father had seen knowing French as a sign of sophistication, and useful when the family traveled to Europe. “I really must join my husband now,” she said, still in French, and started to move away.
Sammy’s grip on her arm was firm, but not too rough. “Don’t run off so soon,” he said. “Did your husband leave you up here alone? That wasn’t very gentlemanly. You should stick with me and we’ll make him jealous.”
She stifled a groan. She’d forgotten that her brother was an incorrigible flirt. He was convinced no woman could resist him—and many of them didn’t. Though he wasn’t the handsomest of men, money and power were an amazing aphrodisiac.
“That really would not be a good idea, monsieur,” she said, and shot past him.
“Well, if you want to play it that way,” he called, and took off after her.
On the edge of panic, Anne hurtled down the narrow, steep chute, skiing faster and more recklessly than she ever had. Why had she ever come up here? She should have listened to Jake, and stayed safely at the bottom of the mountain. No telling what Sammy would do if he found out his flirt was instead his sister—that is, if she even survived this perilous descent.
She shot out of the trees, into the open bowl. If she hadn’t been so frightened, she might have enjoyed the treeless, more moderate terrain. But her only thought now was to get away from Sammy and lose herself in the crowd.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was still close behind her. “Wait!” he shouted. “I only want to talk to you.”
She took off, sure she would get away now. He was red-faced and out of breath, heavier and more out of shape than she was. She was skiing well, gaining confidence, and she began to relax, energized by her narrow escape. Wait until she told Jake about this...
Suddenly, she was falling. Her ski caught an edge and she faltered and was thrown to the ground, landing in a heap in soft snow, unhurt, but stopped.
As she struggled to her feet, Sammy skied up beside her. “Are you all right?” he asked, sticking to French.
She nodded, careful to keep her head down, her eyes focused on finding one ski that had detached in the fall and clicking back into it.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, you know,” Sammy said. “I’m a good guy. Isn’t that right, Carl?”
Carl, a looming hulk on Sammy’s right, nodded. “Of course.”
Anne said nothing, having decided that silence was the best option. Maybe he’d mistake her terror for shyness, or even a European disdain for the pushy American.
“You look so familiar,” Sammy continued. “I’m sure we’ve met before. Where are you from? Paris? Or maybe Nice?”
She shook her head, and skied away. There was nothing he could do here on the slopes, she’d decided. He could follow her and he could talk to her, but he wouldn’t grab her or force her to reveal her face. He still saw her as a possible romantic interest. With any luck, he’d give up before they reached the bottom of the mountain.
“Seriously, I’m sure I know you,” he called, and raced after her.
He skied so close she was afraid he was going to cause a collision. Maybe that was what he wanted—another fall he could help her up from, maybe while pulling the gaiter from her face and seeing her more clearly.
She pushed on, skiing faster. Recklessly. Her legs were shaky with fatigue, and her pounding heart wasn’t helping matters any. If only there was some way to get rid of him.
She managed to put a little distance between them, but Sammy was determined and she had no doubt he’d catch up to her soon. She looked around for some escape—a run she could dart onto, or other people who might intervene.
Her rescue came from the most unlikely quarter. Hurtling toward them in an awkward half-crouch came a figure dressed in bright orange pants and a blue jacket—the clothing Jake had chosen at the thrift store yesterday.